The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth — and What We Can Do About It

Samuel Woolley co-founded the Computational Propaganda Project at the Oxford Internet Institute before moving to the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the propaganda research lab. The Reality Game looks beyond current disinformation tactics to the next wave: deepfake video and audio, AI-generated synthetic media, and the convergence of computational propaganda with immersive technologies. Written before the explosion of generative AI, the book's warnings have proved prescient.

Woolley's argument is not technological determinism — he does not claim that deepfakes will inevitably destroy democratic discourse — but rather that the same structural conditions that made social media manipulation so effective (platform incentives, cognitive vulnerabilities, weak governance) will make synthetic media manipulation even more potent if those conditions are not addressed. The book proposes a framework for democratic values to be built into the design of emerging technologies, rather than retrofitted after the damage is done. For practitioners advising clients on emerging information threats and technology governance, this is the most forward-looking account currently available.